Is not the first time I play this A-RPG, no, nor the second. It is the third time I return to the game, but this time it’s for real. It wasn’t the game’s fault, no, nothing further from reality. Until recently I hadn’t a good computer, and the fact of playing this game at 20 fps made me get very mad and I was forced to abandon, for the sake of my health.
“Shut up Victor, nobody cares about your life”… Well, let’s talk about Path Of Exile, which is the task that concerns us.
WHAT’S PATH OF EXILE?
Path Of Exile, and from now on, PoE, is a title that has been out for a while. It was released in October of 2013, developed by Grinding Gear Games is a free to play that can be downloaded in Steam. It recieved a lot of good reviews, especially from users, due largely to the stumble that Diablo III suffered, why am I talking about Diablo? Very simple, We are facing what many gamers consider “what Diablo III should have been and it wasn’t”. But the reason of this will be discuss further below.
There is something that affects all the free to play games and is an important issue for developers, how to make money with the game if its a F2P? At the same time, is something very controversial, it doesn’t matter how well balanced its a game, and even more a game of this kind, if you apply microtransactions as a way of funding maybe your game becomes a «pay to win» or a «pay to fast«, but this is not the case, and thanks for it Grinding Gear Games. The only possible microtransactions the game has, is to acquire aesthetic complements, like aspects to our armor or weapons. As an independent company, its main purpose is not to make a lot of money, but get visibility and reputation, and in the future set more ambitious works. Who knows, maybe Blizzard offers them to take the relay on the development of Diablo’s saga.
GUTTING THE GAME
Development
The game is divided into three acts (yes, it is structured in a very similar way to Diablo. I already said that it had all the sense in the world to campare both games), each with its own maps and checkpoints, this acts have their own city where missions and tasks will be assigned during our adventure.
The maximum target level in the game is 100, so these three acts will get to be re-played 3 times, but not in the same way, imagine what are boredom…
No, here, and as in its twin Diablo, the acts here get harder and harder. The three levels of difficulty that we face are; normal, cruel and merciless.
Characters
We will have 6 classes of characters available, three of them based (in the beginning) exclusively on one of the three attributes; Strength, Dexterity or Intelligence:
– Marauder: Melee. Attribute: Strength
– Ranger: Distance. Attribute: Agility
– Witch: Magic attacks with ranged spells. Attribute: Intelligence.
And three other characters based on mixed attributes.
– Duelist: Thief melee attacks. Attributes: Strength and Dexterity.
– Templar: Melee and use spells. Similar to a paladin. Attribute: Strength and Intelligence.
– Shadow: A kind of magic thief. Attribute: Dexterity and Intelligence.
Since the last expansion we can find another character, Scion, she is a mix of everything, this is; a third of Intelligence, another third of Dexterity and a last third of Strenght.
However, the most amazing feature of this game is that eventually, you’ll be able to play in the way you want with the character you want, regardless of their initial preferences. Why is this?
Passive skills system
Overwhelming, that’s the word, and the feeling that shakes us the first time we see it. Trying to memorize it would take months or years, if someone is capable of such milestone, I certainly do not. However, everything is much simpler than it seem. When we create our first character, depending on the class that we choose, he, or she, will be placed in a different position on the skills tree, that is why every character is speciaized in an attribute, but we can assign him whatever we want, total and absolute freedom!
Active abilities and attacks system
Another attractive feature that brings us PoE is its attack skills system, we will not have a fixed abilities tree for each character as in other games, instead we’ll use gems of 3 types (red = strength, green = dexterity, blue = intelligence) that will hook on our weapons and armor (similar to what we have seen in Diablo) with the difference that they don’t give us properties, instead, they give us a spell or ability to attack with, for example; if we find a gem «firestorm» and we hook it to its respective slot in an item (one with the same color) it will allow us to use the attack, all these gems have a system of «lvl up», improving their damage, mana consume, accuracy, range, etc.
However we will have other gems, the “support gems” that enhance or amplify the effects of the gems of attack, those which give us spells.
Market in-game
Unlike the vast majority of games, we won’t find any standard currency in PoE, the purchases and sales are done by barter, the seller or a random user, will demand us to change other items just to get the one that we want (generally this items required a low effort to being obtained)
This is great, because, and I guess we all agree here, extreme inflation and deflation in games of this type are something very common and it really makes the market become a roller coaster, so… Back to the Neolithic!
Game Modes
Path of Exile is a games focused on hardcore gamers, being a game developed by gamers for gamers, but it can be enjoyed by any kind of player, even the more casuals. This variety of possible gamers is due to its games modes:
– Standard, or default league: As its name impies, is the normal game mode, this doesn’t present major difficulties. Accesible to the less experienced players.
– Hardcore: In this league the characters can’t be resurrected, instead, when they die they become part of the standar league. In the Hardcore league, items are usually better.
Also from time to time, two game modes that have their own rules are renewed, such the existence of pvp in open world or many other features. These leagues operate for a limited time, and at the end of the «season» our character goes to the standard or hardcore league, depending on the category in which you were playing the “season”.
IMPRESSIONS
As you may have noticed, I have not mentioned the story, thats because it failed trying to interest me, I only paid attention for some minutes, after that, I forgot who I was, why I was there and my motivations, or the stories of the NPCs. But, whatever, the gameplay is fantastic, and as we have already seen, the evolution of the character gives us immense freedom. Surely you’ll be forced to replay it several times if you want to squeeze all the potential that brings you the game.
The atmosphere is great, there were moments, especially when I was playing the Act III, that really made me feel uncomfortable – in a good way, if possible – I have imagined that I was in Silent Hill!
Visually is not that bad but nothing special, some people consider that it looks sometimes even better than Diablo, and remember that we are talking about a f2p…
I intend to keep playing Path of Exile, but something makes me angry. It has succeeded because it has found a disgusted public with Blizzard, a frustrated public that felt betrayed by Diablo III, PoE doesn’t innovate, is a clone of the previous A-RPG from the guys that made World of Warcraft, and what really needs the A-RPG gender is an innovative game that builds a new road to follow, and at the same time that captures the majority of the public of this type of games, who is often very fussy.
Until then, PoE is a great choice if you like A-RPG games, made with a lot of love by big fans of Diablo, free – I actually think it’s the best f2p I’ve played in my life – and which will offer you a generous amount of hours of gameplay.
ESSENTIAL
R|R 